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Standing Out From Your Staffing Competition

When you get down to it, the total size of the staffing industry is mind-blowing – and that’s just in the U.S. According to the American Staffing Association, there are somewhere around 25,000 staffing and recruiting companies operating approximately 49,000 offices across the country. Of those, 56% of the companies and 75% of the offices are in the temporary and contract staffing sector, and pre-pandemic staffing provided job and career opportunities for roughly 16 million employees per year. These numbers are staggering and, frankly, a little overwhelming. 

Feeling like a small fish in a massive pond becomes even more daunting when you consider the current economic outlook. Concerns over a possible recession loom large, putting additional pressure on staffing companies to outperform the competition. But beyond pumping yourself up to “Eye of the Tiger” every morning, giving out lackluster career advice on LinkedIn or coining a recognizable catchphrase, what can you do to stand out? How can you be the best that staffing has to offer? 

Use Earned Data

Earned data is the data that already exists in your databases, everything from ATS and CRM to email and spreadsheets. It’s a veritable treasure trove, provided you unlock its usefulness. First things first, clean it up! When was the last time anyone scrubbed that ATS?

Think about it like checking the fridge before going grocery shopping. The only way to avoid buying duplicates or forgetting something vital is to check what you have on hand. And don’t forget to check your notes. There’s critical information all over your systems, just waiting for you to use it to your advantage.

Once that’s out of the way, this earned data becomes the basis for tactics like automated talent redeployment and candidate-to-job matching, all the fancy stuff that will drive outcomes and set you apart from the crowd. 

Supercharge Your Process

Building on that last point, with your data cleaned up and room to try out new strategies, consider your current process and how you might boost your output. Automation isn’t limited to redeployment. You can also use it to up your marketing game, taking those (personalized!) batched emails and messages to the next level with follow-up to ensure you’re connecting with targets regularly.

Ever hear of Ron Popeil? He was an inventor best known for starring in his own infomercials. One of his most popular products was the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie, which he promoted using the tagline, “Set it, and forget it!” Think of automation as a way to set your process and keep it in motion. Take another note from Mr. Popeil with the phrase, “But wait, there’s more!” 

Expand Your Purview

While having a niche is helpful in staffing, it can also become limiting as time goes on. That goes for both clients and candidates. If you’re concerned about the impact of a potential downturn, take this opportunity and start to learn about other companies and industries.

You know what transferable skills are, so leverage your own and do your research. Figure out which sectors will remain in demand. Read up on position types, common qualifications and credentials that go along with these jobs.

Find out where these candidates hang out online and begin to familiarize yourself with their behaviors. The goal is to broaden your expertise and make yourself indispensable, regardless of hiring conditions. 

Follow the Platinum Rule

TikToker “rocketjump” recently went viral with his 3.5-star rule for Chinese restaurants. In the video, he explained that he found that the most authentic Chinese restaurants typically have 3.5 stars on Yelp. Not three, not four. Exactly 3.5.

The reason why? American service expectations. Though the food might be better in these establishments, U.S.-based reviewers ding the restaurant on the review because of their service expectations. Think about the service expectations for staffing. Even if your delivery and results are flawless, are you following the platinum rule of treating people how they want to be treated?

Think about your clients as partners and move from a transactional mindset to a relational one. Keep clients informed on who you already have access to, whom you need to reach out to and what the response has been. Go above and beyond the expected and aim for delight. 

Staffing is incredibly cyclical, which is why when it comes to standing out from the competition, the best way is to do a better job faster, no matter the market. Doing that means taking full ownership of what you know through earned data, industry insight, contacts and connections and optimizing it for your clients.

It’s about walking that walk and talking the talk. 

Talent Acquisition Technology: Sourcing Wins as Job Boards Lose

Talent acquisition technology companies, as well as closely related companies, have made the Deloitte Fast 500 over the years. For 2022, the rankings of the fastest growing TA tech vendors looks different than it did pre-pandemic. They include background checking vendor TrueWork, and sourcing tech SeekOut. Each made the top 100, while conversational AI Paradox made the top 150.

Reflecting on the award, Paradox CMO Josh Zywien told RecruitingDaily: “We didn’t create this business to win awards, but we view things like this as acknowledgements that we’re doing the important stuff well – because growth usually comes from solving real problems for real clients, over a meaningful period of time. It’s great validation and an honor to make the Deloitte Fast 500 two years in a row, but it won’t distract us from keeping our heads down to get a little bit better tomorrow than we are today.”

The North America Technology Fast 500 is Deloitte’s annual ranking of the fastest-growing North American companies in the technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech sectors, now in its 28th year. Talent acquisition technology has quickly become an important part of the list as the labor market has become extremely challenging.

THE WINNERS ARE

The annual review ranks companies selected based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2018 to 2021.

AS TA TECH EVOLVES, ARE JOB BOARDS STILL RELEVANT?

There are always numerous attempts to create the next disruptive technology in talent acquisition, and the trends point to where this may be heading. If you parse through the list and its categories, you see growth driven by a movement away from traditional recruiting models and beginning to adapt to a changed world of talent. Sourcing as well as learning and development are the clear winners.

Neither of those categories made the list just 5 years ago. A few job boards (The Muse, Diversity Incorporated, etc) made the list back then but didn’t crack the top 100. And both are notably absent in 2022. Post-pandemic, proactive talent acquisition and retention tools matter. Finding talent, engaging with it, and then making the offer process (background checking) painless have become critical. Learning and development, along with on-demand talent, are efforts to creatively refill increasingly dry talent pools. And job boards… well. They’re still out there, and they still get big VC dollars thrown at them, but when you look at growth there’s a suggestion their time may be plateauing.

That’s not certain, of course – having centralized hubs such as Indeed makes sense. But, niche job boards are fading – in large part because they simply don’t make sense. Aside from candidate traffic being swapped behind the scenes in order to fluff numbers (more on that in another article), they struggle to stand out, unless they’re an add-on to a more generalized site (ie, AdAge will have job listings for advertising pros who are there for something else). Increasingly, talent discovery, training, and intelligence tools are moving to the front of the line when it comes to TA tech budgets. This author expects these trends to do nothing but continue.

 

9 Characteristics of Successful Talent Leaders

A workplace can be functioning, but if it lacks leadership, it’s not thriving. Successful leaders cultivate specific practices and traits that help them and their teams succeed. Need some examples? Take it from these nine business talent leaders.

Prioritize Individual Employee Success

Successful talent leaders focus on making sure that every employee is working at their full potential. These leaders do this by improving the efficiency and simplicity of processes as a way of heightening employee experience, job satisfaction, productivity and quality of output. They know that making work easier for employees is the key to a loyal, highly productive and innovative workforce. As such, they make it a priority to find ways of streamlining workflows and removing any impediments to employee success.

Joe Flanagan
Founder, 90s Fashion World

Find Growth in Adaptability & Communication

The most successful talent leaders are individuals who prioritize adaptability and communication. Starting a business always means tackling unforeseen challenges. It is essential to stay on your feet and adapt with grace to overcome roadblocks and improve the business. Without communication, a business has no direction, and company missions and values can fall to the wayside.

On one hand, how a company is shared with the world and how the company treats its employees are huge factors in ensuring prolonged success internally. On the other hand, communication and adaptability are skills that each play a large role for established and successful leaders.

Guna Kakulapati
Co-Founder & CEO, CureSkin

Keep Learning to Improve the Development of Talent

Talent leaders should spend time developing their employees. However, in order to do that on a continual basis, they should also be pushing themselves to grow their own skills. The more the leader is learning, the more assets they can draw on to help develop talent within their teams.

Heather Smith
CPO and Senior Account Executive, Flimp Communications

Unlock the Potential of Every Team Member

A leader motivates their team by being one of them. The best philosophy is to foster an open creative environment to unlock the potential of every team member. When you see your team as your partners as much as the client, your passion for a project will radiates down to the team. Strive to promote collaboration so that everyone involved feels they are making something truly special. Inspiring and cultivating a passionate collaborative team is essential.

Michael Ayjian
Co-Founder, 7 Wonders

Be Selective & Picky with Purpose

Successful talent leaders know that recruiting is never about just filling a seat: being picky is a characteristic that puts you a notch above your peers that are dipping into the same pool of talent. There are probably hundreds—if not thousands of people that can handle the responsibilities of the role you’re trying to fill.

The best HR pros see the bigger picture and find candidates that do more than just the job: they find people who’ll make a positive impact throughout your workplace. When talent leaders are picky—with purpose—they go beyond the surface to find people that elevate an organization.

Jessica Arias
Director of People & Culture, OnPay Payroll Services

Empower Your Employees

Talent leaders differ from managers because one of their primary purposes is to inspire, not direct or instruct. A talent manager should learn how to motivate their employees by drawing from their experience and nudging them in the right direction. A talent leader must empower employees to hone resilience, a problem-solving mindset, how to generate inspiration on their own and, ultimately, how to succeed on their own. If a talent leader can manage to do this, they are likely to be successful.

Marc Roca
Owner, 4WD Life

Pursue Top Talent with Speed & Decisiveness

A candidate receives outreach for an open role at an appealing firm. They apply, get an interview and wait. Another interview follows and another. Then, they wait again. Meanwhile, another role opens at a competing organization. The candidate interviews and quickly receives an offer. While the first firm weighs its options, the candidate slips through their fingers.

As an executive recruiter, I’ve watched this happen countless times. Candidates put in the work, but the company dithers. Speed and decisiveness are winning characteristics of a successful talent leader. A talent strategy can be put in place, compensation bands painstakingly worked out and a pool of all-star candidates assembled. But if talent leaders don’t quickly and decisively execute their strategy, they’ll lose.

Tony Topoleski
Project Manager, ECA Partners

Have Empathy

Successful talent leaders are highly empathetic. Empathy enables them to feel connected to their subjects since they are able to identify with issues they are going through. Their leadership is not dictatorial in nature, and this brings employees together under them to support their leadership hence making stronger teams. Empathetic leaders are able to work today in order to realize what the future holds in the coming days because they make everyone feel that they belong to the team and that their contribution is important.

Yongming Song
CEO, Imgkits

Compartmentalize Life & Work Roles

One of the toughest things to learn when it comes to managing people is how to compartmentalize your roles between life and work, and the emotions that come along with them. Your main goal should be to prioritize their thoughts and well-being on an individual level, putting aside your own personal feelings to ensure you show up and actively listen to those that you manage.

This means that no matter what, when you step into your role as manager to meet with someone, you set aside all other issues or frustrations that you’re having in order to fully show up for that employee. Compartmentalization is a practice that’s mastered in use; meaning that the longer you train yourself to do it, the more successful you will be with it down the line.

Karim Hachem
VP of eCommerce, La Blanca

Hiring in 2023 Will Benefit Gen Z, and Give Recruiters Ulcers

Job seeker behavior will continue to reflect the impact of a pandemic, war in Europe, economic whiplash and, well: everything else, according to new iCIMS research.

According to their newly published 2023 Workforce Report, one in three workers plan to look for a new job in 2023, but another third of workers plan to dig in with their current role, taking on more hours and responsibilities. The dichotomy in the workplace, constant upheaval and mixed messages are impacting the way people work and challenging organizations’ ability to retain and grow their workforce.

Remote Will Matter

It’s important to remember that we’re in the midst of major historic change. Economies, governments, coastlines and more are being eroded by multiple forces. This type of shifting makes any sort of forecasting challenging at best. That said: the data in the report makes sense (at least for now).

Elon Musk’s “return to office or you will be exterminated by my Daleks” (or something along those lines), one thing is clear – we’re not going back to the office the way we did in the past. Too many people are looking for hybrid or full-remote roles, and job seekers are at a significant advantage when it comes to bargaining power. In addition, Gen Z is very interested in hybrid/ virtual work.

Gen Z For The Win

Much of Gen Z has never known a workplace that wasn’t flexible, and it looks like hybrid work is here to stay. It’s popular overall, but young people are especially attached: workers 18 to 34 years old are 59% more willing to walk than older colleagues if it’s taken away. With retention being a significant concern, that matters. And Gen Z hiring, especially recent grads, is clearly on employers’ minds.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) is reporting that employers plan to hire 14.7% more 2023 graduates compared to the class of 2022. Nearly half of employers surveyed think that the class of 2023 is entering a very good to excellent job market. This is a marked improvement from 2020, when one in four young workers lost their jobs, and graduates found themselves in a wild hiring market.

“Right now, we’re seeing a market where there are abundant opportunities,” Nicole Hall, director of career and professional development at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, which works with undergrad and grad students, told Recode. Students, she said, are confident they’ll be able to get jobs in the fields they want.

Breaking: Amazon is Laying Off 10,000 Employees

According to company insiders, employees of Amazon are being told the company plans to slash up to 10,000 employees. It is not known at this time if that number is all permanent employees, or if contractors will be included.

Amazon now joins several other significant tech employers – Facebook parent company Meta, as well as Twitter – in making significant cuts to their staff. And while Amazon’s number is roughly equivalent to Meta and Twitters, they are a much larger employer. As of today, Amazon has laid off 3% of their population, Meta laid off 13%, and Twitter laid off 50%.

RecruitingDaily has reached out to Amazon for official confirmation, and will update accordingly.

Recruit Holdings Releases Q2 Earnings

Recruit Holdings, the Japanese parent-company of Indeed and Glassdoor, has released its quarterly earnings report. Overall the numbers are strong, both from a revenue perspective as well as engagement.

Indeed saw strong growth, with unique visitors growing from 250 million in March to 300 million in September. Recruit attributes this to several factors, from tweaks made to how they attract traffic, moving from an external measurement tool (Google Analytics) to one built internally. In addition, according to the company: “There has been a partial or full rebound in the number of people participating in the labor force and an increase in the rate of job switching in many countries in which Indeed operates websites.”

Recruit Holdings also reported continued growth and adoptions of its SMB-oriented business suite Air Business Tools, specifically driven by sales of its applicant tracking system “AirWORK ATS”. The solution is targeted at the Japanese market.

The company has also announced a share buyback of 2.5%, which began mid-October.

You can find the full report here.

Bristol Myers Sqibb, Booz Allen Named Best Employers for Vets

Military Times has released their list of best employers for veterans. Over 200 organizations submitted responses to the Best for Vets: Employers survey that fielded from July to September, and 175 made the list. The editorially independent program produces a highly respected analysis of a company’s efforts to recruit, retain, and support current and former service members, military spouses, and military caregivers.

Among those taking top honors were Bristol Myers Sqibb, Booz Allen, and Comcast (ranked 1 – 3, respectively).

Bristol Myers Squibb sees competitive advantages in their ability to attract and retain veterans.

“With the talent wars so strong, we’ve needed to find other good avenues for recruiting folks,” said Patrick Krug, veterans community network lead at Bristol Myers Squibb, the New Jersey-based pharmaceutical giant and the top company on this year’s list. “And guess what? We already have that with our veterans pipeline.

“They have great transferable skills, plus they bring additional skills of leadership, flexibility, dedication and all the other intangibles that veterans bring. So in 2021 and 2022, we’re up almost 400% in veteran hiring, versus 2020 and earlier years.”

Added Jyoti Chopra, Chief People, Inclusion and Sustainability Officer for MGM Resorts, another award winner: “[Our] long-standing commitment to our nation’s service members, veterans and families reflect our company’s culture and core value to champion inclusion,” she said  “We remain intensely focused on providing resources and career opportunities for those who have sacrificed so much to protect our freedom and fundamental human rights.”

The list was compiled in partnership with the Fors Marsh Group, a research firm specializing in the veterans and the military community.

For the past two years, the rankings have been focused on areas of importance to veterans in the workplace, including areas such as mentorship programs, military-specific training opportunities, and connections with the veterans community.

The 2022 rankings included four new companies in the top five. Researchers said that was a result not of established firms doing more poorly but of many companies outperforming their past scores – a reflection of increased focus and support for veterans across the workforce.

Live and Searchable List of Laid Off Employees

If you’re looking for a quick way to find high-tech, and high-quality, talent, Layoffs.fyi has a fantastic resource. The crowd-sourced tool allows those laid off in the tech sector to add their info – which includes name, location, title, functional area, LinkedIn info, and more. It’s a bit of a treasure cave for those who have funnels to fill. Just hit the List of Employees Laid Off, and open sesame.

While there are major tech layoffs happening, the latest inflation, jobs, and unemployment numbers suggest that hiring will broadly continue through the quarter. Since most companies have woken up to the idea that they are all – at some level – tech companies, too. Which means their hiring teams need to, well, hire.

Go forth, and get these humans new jobs. It’s good and good for you.

Layoffs Hit Recruiting Industry

Responding to multiple headwinds, major tech employers including Twitter, Meta, and Salesforce are slashing roles across their organizations. Hit particularly hard are talent acquisition related positions. Wednesday, Meta laid off much of its recruiting team via mass-emails. Some of the recently fired included a recruiter who is due to give birth in two weeks.

In a company-wide message Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced 11,000 job cuts, noting: “Recruiting will be disproportionately affected since we’re planning to hire fewer people next year.”  Similar plans have and will be unrolling across otherf companies, according to insiders. RecruitingDaily has reached out to all three organizations for official comments, and will update accordingly.

REACTIONS

Sourcers, recruiters, marketers and other affected talent professionals have been flooding social media with updates and requests for help. Some of the impacted employees have been blunt about their reaction to the news.

In addition to the recent layoffs announced by Meta, Twitter, and Salesforce, the tech industry as a whole is cutting staff. Netflix, Soundhound, Spotify, Lyft, Stripe, and many other Silicon Valley employers have announced rounds of layoffs over the past few months. Overseas, Tencent, Byju’s, Ola, and Unacademy have also laid off hundreds to thousands of employees to reduce their operating expenses as revenue and investments have dried up.

When the Job Description Doesn’t Match the Job

When most people apply for jobs, they expect the job description on postings to match the job that will be filled. However, our recently published study examining startup hiring shows that this isn’t always the case. Sometimes the job someone applies for might not end up being the same job they are hired for.

Jobs can evolve between the time a decision is made to hire someone, and the actual hiring process itself. Hiring managers might change job duties, hire someone for a different job than the one they are applying for, or abandon the job search altogether. While this might be frustrating for job hunters, employers do this in response to uncertainties in the workplace.

At a time when employers are struggling to find employees and many people are making career changes, knowing and understanding why this happens is crucial both to those hunting for new jobs and for people trying to fill some of the many jobs that have been vacated.

Why jobs change between posting and hiring

For our study on startup hiring, we interviewed more than 100 startup founders, managers and their employees, job seekers and experts from the startup community. We analyzed the interviews to understand how and why jobs changed in this period and found two main patterns.

We found that some employers deliberately use the hiring process to figure out the needs of their organization and define their new positions accordingly. In cases like this, employers know they need to hire someone, but they don’t yet have a clear idea of what that job will look like.

Woman being interviewed
Hiring managers may change the tasks in jobs, hire for entirely different jobs or abandon job searches altogether.
One startup in our study used the hiring process to define two new marketing positions. Instead of writing and posting a formal job description, the founders scoured their networks and brought two marketing candidates in for a non-traditional evaluation process.
The founders described their current marketing challenges and asked the job candidates to present their solutions. Based on the presentations, they designed two distinct marketing positions around the skills of the two candidates.

Unplanned job changes

In other cases, changes in job duties are not part of a planned process. Hiring managers might start with clear descriptions of the jobs they want to fill, fail to find candidates with the skills they’re looking for and end up redefining and reposting those jobs.

One CEO we interviewed did this after he received an overwhelming number of applications above the skill level needed for a personal assistant opening. He reposted the job as an office manager position, which required a higher credential, and quickly filled it.

Some managers also change their minds about what they want in the midst of the hiring process.

One startup in our study identified problems in their sales function in the middle of the hiring process, and ended up changing the job after applications had come in. They offered one candidate — who had applied for the original full-cycle sales manager position — the new job as a lead generator. He was promised that eventually he would move into the original sales job he had applied for.

Lastly, managers sometimes stumble across great candidates who fit different positions and fill those jobs instead. One startup in our study went to a job fair hoping to find a mid-level developer, and ended up hiring an entry-level developer and a marketing director instead.

Positive and negative impacts

We found that this evolution of job descriptions during the hiring process can have mixed consequences for both the hiring organizations themselves and new hires.

Some changes, like taking down and reposting jobs, can lead to positive consequences, like more stable jobs and incumbents who remain in the organizations. It can allow the organizations to learn, create a better organizational structure and even undertake new work.

This finding is consistent with past research that found changes in job descriptions can allow organizations to adapt to a variety of situations by developing structures and strategies that fit the circumstances.

Workers in cubes
Some employers deliberately use the hiring process to figure out the needs of their organization and define their new positions accordingly.

However, we observed that most of the other types of job changes in our study resulted in negative consequences, like job instability, protracted conflict over job territory and the exit of the incumbent and dissolution of the job.

For example, the job candidate mentioned earlier who was offered a job different from the one he applied for ended up in a conflict with the sales director, and his job never transitioned to the full-cycle sales job he had been promised at hiring. He was gone within a year and his position was not filled.

This finding is consistent with past research that found that changing jobs around individual job holders can result in bias, favoritism, low morale and undesirable and unpredictable power struggles.

Hiring inequality

The dynamic nature of job descriptions has the potential to produce inequality in the hiring process, since not all job applicants understand that jobs can change between posting and hiring. Those who do understand will have a distinct advantage over those who don’t because they know to apply for jobs even when their preferences and qualifications don’t line up with the job posting. This knowledge may align with individual demographics.

This may be particularly bad for women and members of other under-represented groups who are less comfortable applying for jobs where they do not fit the stated qualifications. Prior evidence has shown that women tend to apply for the jobs they are already well-qualified for while men apply to the jobs they aspire to be qualified for.

Women also may be less likely than men to apply for jobs with the expectation that the jobs will evolve to fit their skills and preferences. If more women are aware of the results from our study, it could result in more applying for jobs that seem outside their area of expertise.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Soft Skills Now Dominate Job Requirements

While it’s not news that recruiting is especially complex at the moment, newly released data from Randstad Sourceright has an interesting (if not entirely shocking) insight: soft skills are in huge demand.

The research uncovers a significant surge in job postings that require such talents since last year (an increase of 51 percent). For AI and machine learning roles, nearly 62% of job postings seek talent with collaboration, dexterity, and multitasking skills. Critical thinking and research are highly sought-after skills in cloud computing, where there is an average 73% increase in demand for these competencies.

Key Findings:

  • Cybersecurity skills are among the highest-paying skill clusters, although some roles in artificial intelligence and machine learning may surpass the average for this cluster. Employers should actively review compensation levels to avoid losing these professionals.
  • Women’s representation in technology skill clusters continues to be low, with just 15% of those working in mobile applications identifying as female. Helping women to pursue or reskill into this field should be a priority for employers.
  • Remote work has become a thorny issue for organizations, but forcing employees to come back may be detrimental. Hybrid work arrangements will help facilitate sourcing and hiring in tight markets, especially for skill clusters like artificial intelligence and machine learning, which hold the highest share of remote working potential.
  • More user interface and user experience (UI/UX) specialists in the Americas work in the IT services sector than any other. Businesses outside of this sector should differentiate their employee value proposition to attract these specialists.
  • More than 60 million people work in sales and business development. Employers would be wise to consider sourcing from this cluster to fill customer-facing jobs such as account management or client support.
  • Only about a quarter of business intelligence and data visualization professionals received STEM education, with many having graphic arts backgrounds instead. Employers looking to hire these specialists should consider sourcing those with design-focused experience and education.

RD Insights

Think of soft vs hard skills as Y-factor vs X-factor. The X-factor is quantifiable, measurable. The Y-factor is – to use a highly technical term – “squishier”. This makes it challenging to wrap hard metrics around. Quantifying traits such as curiosity, empathy, adaptability, teamwork, etc is a challenging task.

There’s a gut element to it that tends to make some people nervous. Regardless: it’s critical to success. Employers increasingly get it. A recent LinkedIn survey showed that 80% of HR professionals say that soft skills are increasingly important to a company’s (and a  candidate’s) success.

Thankfully, there is data to back this up – and that will help both talent acquisition as well as HR pros make the case to executives who still want hard data (ahem: hello, finance team). Boston College, Harvard, and the University of Michigan were part of  studies in communication and problem-solving. Results indicated that those who exemplified important soft skills boosted both productivity and retention by 12%. These companies reported a 250% return on investment. Lastly, research from the National Soft Skills Association reports that 85% of jobs success comes from having well-developed soft skills.

Considering how rapidly everything is shifting on a near-daily basis, the ability to change is critical. If your team-mates aren’t able to adapt, grow, and apply new skills and innovative ideas, your odds of success as an organization worsen. As noted economist Dr. Edward Demings put it:

“Survival is optional.  No one has to change.”

Adds Randstad Sourceright CEO Mike Smith: “Against a possible economic downturn, now is the time for employers to foster a resilient and adaptive workforce by doubling down on the talent experience, retention and reskilling. Finding opportunities to tap adjacent and transferable skills for the most in-demand roles will prove a critical means for overcoming talent scarcity.”

A downloadable version of the report is available here.

Recruiters Need to Get Creative to Keep Talent Flowing

The economy is in free fall, companies are laying people off right and left, and unemployment is rising. It should be easy for recruiters to find candidates in this environment, right?

That’s what we all read in the media everyday, but by digging a little deeper, the actual story emerges, which is quite different. Yes, the stock market is in a volatile period, but gross domestic product (GDP), the leading measure of the U.S. economy’s performance, grew 2.6% in Q3 2022.

Yes, layoffs have dominated headlines in the past 1-2 months, but there remains 1.67 jobs available for every unemployed person in the U.S. today. And no, unemployment isn’t rising; the national average remains at 3.7%, near its historic low.

While there are definitely some markets where the need for new employees has slowed or stalled entirely, there are many markets where the worker shortage is as acute as ever. A new report from ICS2 and Forrester Research reveals that among cybersecurity companies, there is a global workforce gap of 3.4 million.

With the job market continuing to be hot in many sectors and unemployment at historically low levels, recruiters have to get creative about where they source talent. Here are a few sources that have been easy to overlook but have the potential to yield a large number of viable candidates.

    • Parents – With today’s more progressive family leave policies, both men and women often take time to raise their children. At some point, many of these parents want to re-enter the workforce but are looking for a career that is rewarding and challenging but provides more flexibility. This cohort of men and women often have graduate-level degrees and strong networks of contacts from their previous careers that recruiters can tap to source additional talent.
    • Veterans – As military personnel transition into the civilian workforce, many do not have experience applying for work in a company environment but have learned valuable skills easily transferable to the corporate sectors. Veterans often have a large network recruiters can leverage to seek out additional talent. 
    • Retirees – At many organizations, people are required to retire by a certain age. Retirees are a goldmine of opportunity for recruiters. In terms of their job skills, they are often at the top of their game, and given the length of time they have been working, are likely to also have a strong network for recruiters to mine. 
    • Disabled – Despite laws protecting them, disabled people can be frequently overlooked as sources of talent. This is an enormous mistake. Many disabled people have outstanding skills, and the combination of ADA access requirements with increased acceptance of remote work means any barriers that may have existed no longer do now that commuting has been all but eliminated. 

In early November, the Fed raised interest rates another 75 basis points, indicating its commitment to slow the economy. Whether this will result in a recession or not remains unclear. What does remain clear, however, is that savvy organizations will continue to invest in building their teams and will turn to recruiters to assist them.

Recruiters, in turn, will need to get increasingly creative to find the talent their client organizations desire. Taking a new look at people they might have previously overlooked will give recruiters a leg up on solidifying their relationships with their corporate clients and will help promote innovation and diversity.

9 Talent Acquisition Metrics Worth Tracking

To help you measure your talent acquisitions, we asked HR professionals and recruiting specialists this question for their best metrics. From the failure and retention rates of new hires to your demographic data, there are several ways you can measure how effective your talent acquisition efforts have been.

Here are nine talent acquisition metrics worth tracking:

    • Failure & Retention Rates of New Hires
    • Internal Mobility
    • Source of Hire
    • Number of Applications
    • Offer Rate vs. Start Rate
    • Submission to Interview Ratio
    • Quality of Hire Formula
    • Time from Application to Offer
    • Demographic Data

Failure & Retention Rates of New Hires

Apply talent acquisition metrics for your business, mainly the one that measures performance. The new hire failure rate is the percentage of new employees who leave a company within a specified period, which indicates whether the recruiting is choosing suitable candidates.

Companies gauge the quality of new hires by looking at the retention rate and a combination of appraisal scores. Work quality tracks how well employees are meeting objectives that managers set for them. Utilize these processes to determine the effectiveness of performance in your organization and address any issues which may arise.

Joshua Chin, Co-founder & CEO, Chronos

Internal Mobility

Internal mobility is a great talent acquisition metric because it provides an overview of how your business’ talent development pipelines are faring. Having employees from within your company apply and be accepted for higher roles reduces the time, effort and cost associated with hiring externally, whilst also demonstrating the potential for growth within the business.

Tracking the number of employees hired from within will allow you to tweak and adjust your professional development programs to ensure that you’re providing existing employees with the tools necessary to take the next steps in their career.

Low levels of internal mobility might mean that your business is more prone to resignations, as employees leave for better roles or improved growth opportunities. Internal mobility and talent retention often go hand in hand, serving as two vital elements of long-term workplace culture.

Clare Jones, Marketing & HR Manager, OfficeSpaceAU

Source of Hire

“Source of hire” is an essential metric in talent acquisition. The source of hire metric provides details on the avenue in which a hired employee came to an organization. For organizations that leverage many different outlets to find talent, this metric can help determine where to invest talent attraction dollars supporting an intentional recruiting strategy.

From the lens of diversity recruiting, the ability of a talent acquisition team to assess the source of hire can provide core details that help shape an intentional diversity strategy. This metric may also shed light on process barriers that exclude specific demographics of people, helping drive equitable outcomes for job seekers and ultimately, employees.

Chelsea C. Williams, Founder & CEO, Reimagine Talent Co.

Number of Applications

The number of new candidates applying for your open positions. In order to scale your recruitment efforts and find the right people for your company, you need to track how many people are applying for each position on your website. When you track how many people are applying per position, you can see how much interest your open positions are generating. From here, you can better tailor your hiring process to attract the right candidates.

Karen Ebanks, Founder, Karan Real Estate

Offer Rate vs. Start Rate

When it comes to metrics, I personally believe that the days of dials, connections, emails or texts outbound do not matter. So often, recruiters are so focused on the numbers outbound that they lose track of the key to success: securing interviews and start dates. There are those that believe that providing an offer is the most important aspect to track in talent acquisition, but I disagree.

Interviews are vital in order to find the right person and learn from the process that what you’re truly looking for can’t always be found on paper. The more interviews you bring into the office or meet with virtually, the closer you will be to making an offer. Just as important, in my mind, is the number of starts.

The talent acquisition team needs to not only find the right fit, but get the candidate to the finish line of the hiring process. Building relationships and rapport will help the recruitment team turn the offer into a start because at the end of the day, while offers are great, no one wins without the start.

Megan Blanco, Internship Coordinator, Career Coach, Adjunct Faculty,  University of Central Florida

Submission to Interview Ratio

Quality and efficiency in selecting the best candidates for interviews is a reflection of a healthy talent acquisition process. Test the health of your organization’s process by adopting the key metric of “Submission to Interview” ratio.

Simply put, if your recruiting staff submits 10 candidate resumes for interview consideration and only one resume is selected, you have performed at a very low rate of 10% and likely discouraged your hiring manager.

However, if your recruiting team submits three resumes and two are interviewed, you have achieved an excellent 67% “Submission to Interview” ratio. The benefits of such excellent ratios are many and include the acquisition of top tier talent, the productivity of hiring teams, the satisfaction of job seekers and the strengthening of your organization’s recruiting culture.

So, build quality pipelines of talent you can’t wait to hire as demonstrated by making your primary metric the “Submission to Interview” ratio.

Bill Gunn, Principal Consultant, G&A

Quality of Hire Formula

When it comes to talent acquisition metrics, it’s not only about “time to fill” and “offer acceptance rate”. The “quality of hire” (QoH) metric goes a long way since it measures the value new hires bring to your company, and it’s considered the holy grail of recruitment metrics.

Calculating this metric can help reduce company costs, and increase revenues in the long run. The major obstacles to measuring the quality of your hires, however, are a lack of time and lack of technology.

There is no absolute way to measure this metric, though common approaches include: performance appraisals, retention rates, recruiting managers’ satisfaction and even Employee-Lifetime-Value (ELV).

Some other approaches include the ramp-up period and the cultural fit of a new hire.

To quantify this, one possible formula to use is: QoH = Job Performance  + Ramp-up Time + Employee Engagement + Cultural Fit) / N where N = number of variables (in this case, N = 4). To improve measurement, make sure you gather the right pre- and post-hire data points and optimize your recruitment workflow. AI tech can help here.

Yara Abboud, emcrey

Time from Application to Offer

I think that if a company has the ability to track from the time a candidate applies to the time an offer is made, this will be a huge step in diagnosing any potential hiring issues. It seems to be common use to track the time it takes to fill an open position, however that involves steps that may muddle what’s actually going on.

For example, if a person applies and it ends up taking three months to receive an offer due to delays and multiple interviews, that might contribute to a lower offer acceptance ratio.

Secondary to this would be the time to find a candidate, which allows the organization to see how long it takes to source certain types of candidates over others. Whereas time to offer from the date the person applies uncovers, for example, problems such as the recruiter not being able to get to the candidates fast enough, if the hiring managers are not giving responses back to the recruiter or candidates in enough time, if the interview process is taking too long, or if there are any other delays in making an offer.

Rollis Fontenot III, Founder, HR Maximizer Inc

Demographic Data

Comparing the demographic data of your talent pool to the demographic data of the areas where you’re hiring will provide insight into whether you’re attracting a diverse pool of candidates or you’re excluding certain groups of people.

For example, if you discover a gender imbalance in the number of applicants, you might want to review your job description to make sure you’re using inclusive language. You should also track how different groups advance in the recruitment success to flag potential bias in the process.

Simone Missagia, Marketing Director, Pulsely Limited

Get Ready For a Bumpier Ride – What October Job Numbers Tell Us

Well: here it is. A likely preview of the types of labor reports we’ll be seeing over the coming months. Not so much the exact same numbers, per se, but really more something we should be used to by now. The once-antithetical becoming normal reality. And talent acquisition continues to confuse. Case in point: we’re still desperate to hire, even as we lay people off.

The Numbers

Here’s the raw data for September. According to the DOL’s September Jobs Report, the US economy added 261,000 jobs in October while the unemployment rate rose to 3.7%. That’s up a tic from September’s 3.5% – the lowest rate in 50 years – and still considered historically low. Economists had expected a smaller rise in the unemployment rate, to only 3.6%.

In recent months, job growth has downshifted from a robust average monthly pace of more than 400,000 for most of this year to about 290,000 the past three months. The unemployment rate has been kept low by persistent worker shortages. (That, and a recruitment market that often feels like a game of whack-a-mole, one where the moles can turn into ghosts the moment you make contact with them). This, in turn, has led companies to avoid layoffs on fears they won’t be able to fill openings when the economy bounces back.

That may be changing. New job creation is at the lowest in a year-and-a-half. Layoffs are starting to become hip again. And we’re hearing reports that interview processes are being deliberately slowed by hiring managers who, just a scant few months ago, were willing to accept “can fog a mirror with breath” as an acceptable minimum qualification.

This is where it gets a bit weird. While there are rumbles of slowing job creation, and a loosening labor market: we’re still dealing with historic numbers in both categories. Critical skill-shortages will continue to keep labor shortages in the news, side-by-side with layoff reports. Talent acquisition leaders will find themselves with whiplash.

into the storm

Consider Forrester’s Predictions 2023: Future of Work report. The research and advisory firm envisions a coming hurricane for talent professionals as we enter into what looks to be a  “a perplexing, talent-constrained recession” in 2023. Forrester VP and principal analyst Katy Tynan adds:

“The demographic changes that underpinned the “great resignation“ and the ongoing impact of COVID-19-related absenteeism will continue to constrain the talent market in a tight economy. The outcome is a bullwhip effect in the talent market: Actions that respond to a constraint create an overcorrection in the other direction, keeping the market out of balance. We are navigating uncharted waters. Some of the things that organizations would expect to do and get good results out of will actually have the opposite effect.”

What this means, team, is that we never got around to really addressing skills. Skills needed for roles that are mushrooming to address an economy that is radically different than the one we had just a few years ago – and part of that radical change is the ability to keep changing geometrically. Lacking a more nimble approach to how we find the skills we need when we need them, we find ourselves with some pretty damn dry talent pools. Ones where we’re all fighting each other for the remaining fish. It’s not sustainable – somebody has to starve for somebody else to eat.

To address this, employers, talent acquisition leaders, product firms, heck, the government have to start to move together in lockstep to discover solutions. Because we aren’t there yet – and that’s going to keep hurting us as this new weird economy moves along. If we don’t, we face a sort of near-term dystopia: one where a small group with the right skills continues to thrive, and a majority move into a limbo of gig work, unemployment, seasonal roles, etc to survive.

Employers dig talent with skills

Understandably, companies cannot be expected to function as charities – they will continue to need appropriate talent. That said, we do need to manage through the near-term. Labor unbalances, with people who find themselves

We recommend forward-leaning talent acquisition leaders across sectors connect into working groups with actionable items as outcomes. Work out the steps to take to move past the theoretical to the practical. Answering questions around how to manage skills transformations where possible, while understanding that some communities and locations simply cannot shift rapidly to new industries. How do we develop the former, while finding solutions that provide meaningful labor to the latter? What should our education system look like in the future? Is the current skills development model broken? And, what does a balanced labor force truly look like – how do we measure success?

For a long, long time, talent leaders have requested to have their voices heard – and now, we have much to say, and a little time to say it. 2023 looks to be wildly complex series of storms around talent and hiring. We will  need to manage to continue to keep our fleet afloat, concurrently steering our ships to new harbors in search of more navigable waters.

 

 

 

Recruitment Marketing to Attract Better-Qualified Talent

When most businesses talk about “lead generation,” they’re referring to client acquisition, but you don’t have to save this strategy for your customers. Recruitment marketing, like client acquisition, requires brand strategy, a prospective database and nurturing relationships.

Most businesses make the mistake of marketing their positions directly before a hiring need. By then, it’s too late. It’s extremely common for candidates to research you and your company before filling out an application. If you don’t take the time to build a brand, talent will avoid you.

This is backed up by various recruitment marketing statistics. 67% of companies don’t have a dedicated role in their talent acquisition team that focuses on recruitment marketing, and 78% state they can’t find enough candidates in the market to fill open roles at all, let alone quickly.

If you want to attract high-quality talent while improving your brand, you need to start investing in recruitment marketing. While it may take some time, the results are more than worth it.

What is Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing is the process of attracting and nurturing talent to your startup by marketing to them. The goal is to drive active or passive candidates to apply to your open positions once they’re available. Recruitment marketing is also the first step of talent acquisition. 

Talent acquisition includes six steps: Awareness, Consideration, Interest, Application, Selection and Hire. Recruitment marketing includes the first three while recruiting involves the last three.

If your business is starting at the application stage, you’re already missing out on hundreds of qualified leads. You’ll need effective lead generation tool, a group of qualified marketers and the right resources to make recruitment marketing decisions and attract a pool of candidates.

Why Invest in Recruitment Marketing?

According to Glassdoor, approximately 75% of active job seekers prefer to apply to a job if the employer is actively managing their brand. Your brand values are reflected in your content.

For example, a culture of employee recognition is important to your future and current team members. If you create blog posts that encourage the benefits of employee recognition and your employees back this up through reviews, you’ll attract more candidates than your competitors.

Passive candidates are more likely to convert into full-time employees if they see this content as helpful. Lead magnets such as case studies build your reputation and increase engagement.

If a candidate gives you their email at the end of the pipeline, you can add them to the candidate database and vet them before you give them an offer. A candidate that looks promising can be contacted at a later date, so long as you keep them interested and engaged with your content.

In the end, a recruitment strategy will save you time and money during the actual recruitment process. Some companies are so good at recruitment marketing that they don’t have to actively look for new hires. They simply refer to their candidate database or email subscriber list.

What to do Before Creating a Lead Magnet

Before creating content, like webinars that generate leads, you must conduct some due diligence. Recruitment marketing and lead generation are both practices and professions, meaning you’ll need someone to plan your campaigns and adjust them according to data.

Companies should do the following before creating lead magnets:

    • Create an employer brand and build brand awareness
    • Engage with brand followers and manage career websites
    • Manage your brand reputation and the candidate experience
    • Define candidate personas and create content for them
    • Determining and optimizing channels to recruit and advertise
    • Drive qualified applicants and convert leads to open roles
    • Build a talent network and generate a pipeline of leads
    • Managing recruiting and networking events online or offline
    • Generating employee referrals and amplifying employee ambassadors
    • Tracking, measuring, and reporting on campaign results via technology

This sounds like a lot of work, but without these steps, your lead magnets won’t be as effective. For example, If your brand doesn’t match what you’re saying or promoting in your lead magnet campaign, your recruitment strategy will fall apart when applicants start the research process. 

How to Create a Lead Magnet The Works

Recruitment-based lead magnets have a conversion path focused on turning passive onlookers into future employees. This path typically starts on your website’s homepage, resource page or thank you page. However, you can also use email/newsletter sign-up sheets or third-party sites.

Whatever you choose to use, make sure you add a button with a call-to-action (CTA) that entices visitors to click the lead magnet. For example, “Get Your Exclusive Career Guide.”

Don’t give up the lead magnet right away. While you can ask for someone’s email address before they click the CTA button, it’s not wise to do this if you’re aiming for talent acquisition. You’ll want to express the type of content they’re receiving and why that should matter to them.

Candidates like to be in the know. If you’re upfront now, they’ll place more faith in your brand.

Instead, you should lead the potential candidate through the following steps:

    1. The reader is taken to a landing page with a form they’re required to fill out. The form should include an email address or phone number, so you can stay in contact.
    2. The reader is taken to a thank you page with a download button.
    3. The reader is given a welcome email that locks them into the recruitment pipeline.

Never “set and forget” your recruitment marketing campaign. Keep potential candidates engaged by creating newsletters and sending updates pertaining to open positions.

7 Lead Magnet Ideas That Attract Talent

Now that you understand the basics of recruitment marketing and how lead magnets work, you can start creating your first lead-generation tools. 

Here are seven high-converting lead magnets.

1. Salary Guides

Active and passive candidates need information on hiring trends to leverage their skills. A salary guide can be useful for anyone looking for a promotion or a new company. You can attract hires by suggesting your company pays higher or offers better benefits than the rest of the market.

2. Career Guides

Career guides are similar to blog posts, except they’re much longer. They often discuss in-depth topics, such as “How to Ace a Job Interview” or “How to Write an Online Sales Resume.” These guides nurture candidates along the recruitment journey and position your brand as trustworthy.

3. Online Courses

An online course is a structured way of delivering educational content and is typically hosted on another website. They often contain worksheets, lesson summaries, quizzes and study guides. Your course’s training videos can reflect the quality of your onboarding process to new hires.

4. Live Webinars

Live webinars are useful for qualifying candidates because they can clarify your management style, policies and company culture. Or you can offer career tips and broadcast your current job vacancies. Create hype around your webinars by advertising them days before you go live.

5. Free Consultations

Free consultations are often used in the SaaS/B2B software industry to answer any questions or concerns their clients may have. They can be used similarly for your recruitment campaigns. For example, you could offer a free consultation related to career or mindset or about your company.

6. Case Studies

Case studies can be used to inspire people because they communicate a pathway to achieve success. You can build your batch of employee case studies by asking candidates and current and past employees why they applied to your company or how you contributed to their growth. 

7. Career Checklists

Checklists are 1 to 2 pages long, easy to make and are often useful to potential candidates. What’s more, you can create checklists by summarizing or simplifying blog posts you’ve already written. We recommend creating a resume, LinkedIn profile or job interview-inspired checklist.